Minute

Chairs: Bryan Duncan and Luan Grugeon

Date
Venue / 24th April 2014
Solid Rock Café, Fraserburgh
Attendance / Bryan Duncan (Chair)
Luan Grugeon
Moira Davidson (Minutes)
Margaret Ritchie
Chris Holmes
Maurice Parkin
Pixie McLean
Margaret Morgan / Calvin Little
Ben Ritchie
Sheila McKay
Tanja Mehrer
Wayne Gault
Helen Elphinstone
Carol Short
Jan Brown / Iris Higgins
Pat Kewley
Chris Bain
Stuart Innes
Christine Heron
Daniel Sutherland
Apologies / Alison Buchan
Elaine Lawson
Isobel Ritchie
George Rutten / Fiona Sayer
Tracey Duthie
Rhona Davidson
Paul Innes
Agreement of last minute / Previous minutes were agreed.
Action
Welcome / Bryan welcomed those present and read out apologies.
Conversation Café – Topic 1
Communication
Matters Arising for the last meeting / The forum split into two groups for lead by Bryan and Luan.
Action points from each group were:
Luan –
  • To link with Community Planning to publicise
  • To follow the example of the ‘Banff Yap’ with similar
  • Publicity for smaller groups to set up
  • Constant advertising in local press
  • Monthly feature in the press to raise awareness
  • Include a much broader range of support services
  • ADP newsletter could be reviewed
  • Too much information can be cascaded down – can it be captured in a bulletin
Bryan –
  • To try to communicate with the community
  • To have more people coming into the forum who live in the area – what are their needs, to include tenants groups, local shopkeepers etc
  • A leaflet to be generated to ask questions of people and tell them about the forum
  • How do we engage with these people and get conversation out there
  • Can we adapt leaflet presented at the Central Forum
  • A bottleneck at the GPs – what do we want GPs to know, what are the key messages
  • To refer to peer support, somewhere you can find out about services
Funding Application for Moving on Group
This had been presented by Brenda Wallace at the last meeting. The bid for £630 had been upheld in principal with certain conditions attached to it. The group had felt they were unable to meet these conditions and had returned the cheque.
Vice Chair
Nominations were asked for at the last meeting. Maurice Parkin had put forward an interest. Maurice was asked to write a bit about himself and why he would like to be considered for that role and come back to the next meeting.
Funded Project Updates / Catherine from Kinship4Kids feedback on the funding they received at the last meeting.
Catherine said they had secured a room at the new Community Centre and would use some of the money for rent and tea and biscuits. They had purchased a new iPad. The children are all doing well and they had done several activities to include going bowling and out for food, a visit to Smiths Bakery. Easter holidays the children all got Eastereggs; they went to the cinema and the swimming pool. Catherine told them about a lad who has been out to the Philippines with the Church.
The Salvation Army also thanked the forum for the £200 at Xmas time which was used to purchase food and made a big difference.
Tanja gave feedback on behalf of the Fraserburgh Support Group who also received funding at the last meeting. The funds had been used for start-up costs, promotional material, leaflets and pocket cards. The meetings had started up again and are held on the 1st Wednesday of each month from 7-9 pm at the Hub. An official launch is expected to take place on the 12th June from 2-4pm at the new Community Centre in Fraserburgh.
Banff Yap and Cup O’ Tea Event / Bryan gave feedback on Banff Yap. There was a really good turnout with a good 20 people attending. The idea for the event came out of the Big Blether as nobody knew what services were around, what was already in Banff and where the gaps were. A few action points came from the day similar to today around reaching out to the community. Negative language and stigma was spoken about with a need for people to be more open and real. Sheila discussed inviting more people in and to hold more regularly. Bryan asked the question about resources, would it be part of the forum and who would Chair if it was held more regular. If it is in the community it might be about giving support or confidence.
Funding Applications
Solid Rock Café
Apex Centre / In the past the North Forum had a sub group who met up to consider funding applications. Luan asked the forum if it would make sense to have something similar to save a bit of time. This would not be a closed group and they would not be making decisions. Their role would be to make recommendations and bring them back to the North Forum.
Christine felt it was a good idea; most people have access to email so the recommendations could be done without having to meet up in person.
Those who were keen to be part of the sub-group were Christine, Pixie, Margaret, Maurice, Bryan and Luan.
Ben spoke on behalf of Dolly who is currently in Uganda. He spoke about the work that goes on in the Solid Rock Café and the good work that Dolly does. The funding is to help with the running of the service, the costs of the café and travelling costs incurred for Dolly to visit people. Ben said they keep on doing fundraisers but have almost exhausted these avenues.
Solid Rock has close links with residential centres and with Teen Challenge. They support vulnerable young people and adults with an ultimate goal of seeing people completely free from addictions. Ben said they have seen a massive flooding of cheap Heroin, Cocaine and MCat of late with dealers trying to get people hooked on it again.
The forum were keen to see the service continue. Luan wondered if there would be funding in the longer term in the form of a grant. The ADP gave a grant to Teen Challenge in the past when they suffered a funding crisis. Bryan asked for some future feedback on how the money would be spent. An idea would be for some photos, follow up statistics or some real life stories.
The forum upheld the bid for £3,000
Daniel and Stuart spoke about the ‘string movement’ and asked for funding toward the start-up costs of a new anti-bullying program for secondary school children aimed at prevention.
They have seen a massive increase in drugs in schools even reporting Class A drugs. Stuart said the concept of ‘string movement’ was started in Sydney and exists to disarm bullying and has apparently taken off massively in other areas. They have done work in schools and asked the question to kids ‘have they been affected by bullying’ and every single hand went up.
Stuart explained the concept – tie it (tie the string round the wrist), tell it (tell people about it) and yell it (do something about it).
Stuart said it was now a recognised organisation in Australia and also down in London. He felt strongly that he wanted to take it here and has had a good response from Mintlaw, Peterhead and Ellon Academy so far. In order to go into the school assemblies the funding is requested for a sound system. They are looking for in the region of £1,000 for a hand held microphone and portable sound system. They would like to use real life stories of people who were bullied or bullied others. Christine asked how they would evaluate their program. The impact is going to be seeing; they have heard great things from school head teachers saying what a difference they are seeing. They work with schools and guidance teachers, social medial and spoke about a support page (string movement page). Luan thought it sounded a new thing and like the idea of it being about peoples well-being and confidence and. The forum upheld the bid for £1,073.
Children and Young Peoples Research / Bryan gave some brief feedback. It has now begun and researchers are getting in touch with contacts and stakeholders. If anyone is working with young people they should get in touch and feed into it.
Fraserburgh CLD Inspection
AOCB / Thank you to everyone who is involved in it. HMI came to evaluate CLD. It had meant a great deal of partnership working – one individual service can’t do everything. Jan read out from the self-evaluation paper which is also available online ‘Inspection of learning and development’. Jan thought it had a strong culture and ethos with a focus on social regeneration and felt the paper was recognising the work they were all doing.
Christine spoke about the 2nd phase of the alcohol and parenting for children in primary schools. A leaflet would be going home in children’s school bags for primary and secondary 1 and 2.
Luan told of two new members of staff joining Drugs Action. Janet Tenant (to cover south and central) and David Beedie (to cover north) as new Service User Involvement workers.
Bryan also gave information on the new North Forum Facebook page.
Time, Date and Venue of next meeting(s) / The next meeting will be held at the Apex Centre on Thursday 10th July2014. Tea/Coffee will be available from 9.30am

North Aberdeenshire Alcohol Drugs BBV Forum

Minute24th April 2014